As someone who put this list together for five years, your presumptions are shortsighted, bordering on ignorant. The list isn’t simple or easy to put together and I’d challenge anyone in Washington to have the patience and organization required to get the monstrosity done each year without shrieking at everyone in a half mile radius. For starters, it’s not a full calendar year. When I ran it, as is the case now, there are many other responsibilities to a job apart from this project and you don’t have a full year to get it done. I’d say six months, tops. To work on it longer would send a person into a Mariah Carey-like state of exhaustion. Sure, I’d search like a hawk all year long, but six months out we’d call for formal nominations. The nominations would come pouring in, the good, bad and the ugly. Then comes the convincing. This required several weeks to months of persuading bashful beauties to let us photograph them: “I’m so embarrassed. Who nominated me? Did my mother put you up to this? I’m so not beautiful. Did I mention I used to model?” Others had a bolder reaction: “Where do you want me?” The photographer works day in, day out. The whole thing becomes a serious full-time endeavor. Your other deadlines don’t cease. At best, briefs on the beauties (if you can convince your coworkers to help, many will and some will refuse) come down to the wire about two weeks before they’re due. At times, the ordeal—and yes, it is one no matter how ridiculous—resulted in a final 48 hours of marathon editing. So, Juli, let’s see you put together a list like this. Who knows, maybe you could do it better. But really? My bet is on no.

And yet: despite the fact that no one—from the subjects to the writers to the wranglers—enjoying the process or the product, it is nomination time yet again. Your humiliation is nigh, sort-of-cute-in-a-non-New-York-or-L.A.-way residents of Washington.

Per The Hill:“Nominations should be sent to 50MB@thehill.com. Please include the person’s name, place of employment, contact information, and a photo.” Absolutelyno fooling around by e-mailing pictures of fictional characters, cartoons, or the deceased. The list is hard enough to put together when it’s just actual living people who want nothing to do with it.